What is a Buddha?
From a talk I gave November 25, 2018. Some of the ideas are adapted from Stephen Batchelor, with apologies.
The word Buddha has two meanings. One meaning is the awakened one. And this is the meaning the Buddha himself usually referred to. The second is the enlightened one. These two meanings - awakening and enlightening - are wonderful metaphors, rich and profound. We need to understand them as metaphors, not as doctrine. And what I say here should be understood, not as doctrine or dogma, but as metaphor, as a suggestion or a possibility. As the French might say, a proposal.
But the Buddha was not a metaphor. He was a real person. The person who we refer to as the Buddha, and who referred to himself as a Buddha, lived some 2500 years ago in northern India.
A Buddha is not a supernatural being, a deity, or a transcendent being. As we look around the world and the many schools of Buddhism, the Buddha is often considered like a supernatural being, endowed with superhuman powers, such as the thirty-two characteristics, or worshipped as a deity. These schools are trying to depict the nobility and dignity of what the Buddha attained. These powers and characteristics are, in the final analysis, inner qualities of all people, of each of us. But, yeah, the depictions, practices, and beliefs, over the ages, have gotten a wee bit out of hand.
I will tell the story of the Buddha, briefly. You likely know it already. I may offer my own twist or two. Take those or leave them. About 2500 years ago in India lived a prince named Siddhartha. He was born to a life of extreme privilege and pleasure. But he was troubled. And he discovered that all people were troubled - rich or poor, healthy or sick, suffering seemed to the lot of every single human being. He set out to see if he could end suffering. He engaged in extreme ascetic practices. They did not work. Extreme pleasure or extreme denial, nothing worked. He sat under a tree, a pipal (kind of fig) tree. He meditated and engaged in a tremendous struggle. His battle was with darkness itself, what we call fundamental darkness. In those days they called it Mara, the devil.
One of my favorite movie directors, Bernardo Bertolucci, made a lovely movie that depicts the Buddha’s enlightenment. You can watch that scene here.
So Siddhartha won his battle with darkness. Here comes my twist: he was not yet a Buddha. He thought, I have won my battle with Mara. I have found my way free of suffering. But I did not do this for myself. I did it to find a path out of suffering for all. But there are no words to explain this wonderful enlightenment, this amazing awakening. There are no words, not because it is magic or mysterious or esoteric. There are no words because it is as it is. It is the world as it is, without illusion, or self-deception. He thought, if I try to explain it, no one will understand. Worse, they will get false hope, get further discouraged, and fall deeper into suffering.
According to the story, this was the devil’s last play, his final and strongest card. And according to the story the god Brahma appeared to him. And the god Brahma whispered, ‘try anyway, you have to try. You have work to do yet.’
So Siddhartha was enlightened but he was not yet a Buddha. He set out to find his old fellow ascetics. They had rejected him because he had rejected their extreme practices. He didn’t know how to explain the wonder he had experienced, but he tried. He opened his mouth and tried. He turned on the light. Only when he opened his mouth, I believe, did he become a Buddha. We are only truly awake when we share, when we are in relation with others.
Let’s consider awakening. We do it every day. When we are sleeping we are entirely alone. If I dream of my mother, it is not my actual mother who joins me. Mom passed away in 2003. It is a construct of my subconscious, dreaming mind. Sleeping is very important and I believe dreams are significant, but they are not interacting with others or the outside world.
When we wake up in the morning we are newly connected to the world, and, especially with others. This is awakening - to know the world as it is, and to connect to it as it is. The Buddha did not have some revelation or special insight. He did not learn some magic key, unknown and unknowable to the rest of us. He connected to the world as it is. No special, transcendent insight, knowledge, or revelation. The world as it is. People as they are. Relationships as they are.
When we awaken from a dream or sleep we come from a private place - our sleep. When we waken we return to the world of senses, people, shared time and space. Not just about me.
We awaken to a complex, interactive, pluralistic world. Life is fragile. Life is uncertain. And is profoundly mysterious, strange.
Our first moments are to prime ourselves for what is to come - work (blah or yay), relationships, errands. And we have very little control over what is to come. This life is what the Buddha awakened to - the reality of dealing with uncertainty, change, the mystic.
The second meaning is enlightenment. We imagine a kind of light came on in the Buddha’s mind. We imagine this as a singular event, a burst of light. I invite you to rather imagine this as something that takes place over time.
You have a sense of self as an awareness of who you are. Philosophers have thought and spoken and written and argued endlessly about whether that self is true or false, whether we even really have a self. Buddhists over the ages have enthusiastically engaged in that discussion. To paraphrase Freddie Mercury - is this a real life or is it a fantasy. Is it all an illusion, a lie, a construct of our mind, or of the mind of god?
We can debate this back and forth, but one thing we can not debate is that we have a sense of self. The Buddha was a prince, a man, a husband. His sense of self shifted with the awakening. You might think of yourself in various ways. Your profession, role in your family, as a consumer, a taxpayer, a voter, a citizen. Some people consider themselves “BMW” people. Some people’s sense of self is as a Calgary Flames fan. Some people’s sense of self is as a Soka member, or even as a Bodhisattva. I want to suggest that we awaken to a new sense of self.
The Buddha experienced a shift in his sense of self - son, prince, husband, member of a class, one who holds certain opinions, values. What street you grew up on, your birth order, astrological sign, Myers-Briggs type. These are all elements of your sense of self.
Did not reject those aspects of yourself. Rather, shift to a fundamentally different relationship with that self. There is a bigger story and we are players in it. Sam, in a strangely self-reflective passage of The Return of the King said, “it's like in the great stories, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.” Open ourselves to the fact that we are thrown into this world at birth to deal with suffering.
Now, back to the second meaning, enlightenment. We want to know what he was enlightened to. Great question. I won’t answer it. I would rather ask the question what light did he shine on others. What light did he shine on the world.
Sensei often uses the metaphor of a dark cave, or dark room. No matter how dark, or how long it has been dark, or how darkly dark it is; once someone turns on the light, the room is illuminated. What was obscure becomes clear. The light shines for all, for others as well as the one who turned it on.
So, my suggestion is rather than spend time wondering how to get what you want, how to become enlightened, or when will you become enlightened, or what to become enlightened to; better spend your time turning on lights.
So, the Buddha is one who is awakened to the world as it is - complex, ever changing, almost always slightly unsatisfactory, and who engages with the world and people as they are, and shines light on both.
